There are many difficult things about being a widow or widower. Even a divorce is the death of a marriage or a family as you once knew it and there are particular struggles that go hand in hand with loss. Besides the obvious things like grief, sorrow, loneliness and fear, there are less obvious things that crop up all the time. How does one continue to do the things that they love without the one they loved doing it with?

Many couples spend their working and family-raising years longing for the days when they can retire and start to travel. I was so fortunate that my husband was as big a wanderer as I was and we were on the go our entire marriage. We jumped at every opportunity to fly and explore and move, always with kids in tow, to see what we could find behind every bend. It was exhausting at times, but I look back over 25 years together and can say that I never regretted a single trip.

For me, traveling has been one of those things that has been difficult to resume. {And I love to travel.ˆ} First off, there is the voice in my head that I drilled into my own kids about "Stranger Danger!" Being aware of your surroundings and not trusting every person you meet. Keeping your travel details quiet and not blaring everything out on Facebook or the blog. Not taking risks but still trying to be adventurous. All things I never worried about when we were together. Being alone sets off all sorts of alarm bells, but I believe that fear is a gift and I have to listen to that voice.

I remember when my daughter was going to study abroad in Florence years ago and the anxiety my husband and I had about sending her off. We could keep our princess in a glass castle, or we could give her permission to fly and break the glass ceiling. We let her spread her wings and go, but not before my husband made her watch that movie where Liam Neeson's daughter went off to Paris and was kidnapped because she did something foolish. {Imagine my husband seeing himself as Liam in this scenario and he would be there to save the day!} True and Funny story, but something to think about.

The second obstacle, although not a BAD one is, "where on Earth do I go?" I was fortunate enough to have already visited some of the top places on my bucket list with my husband, so that is a blessing. Years ago, we got this book, 1000 Places To See Before You Die, and we would sit up in bed and dream and research about where we wanted to go. Every time we visited a place in the book, we would place a sticky tab on the page to mark our journey. I'm proud to say we made it through a good bit of the adventures found in these pages before he passed--each one a treasured story in itself.

There are a few more adventurous things that I can't take on {like hot air ballooning in Cappadocia, Turkey or crossing the Drake Passage to reach Antartica.} I'm not saying I wouldn't ever do it now, I'm just saying I'm not quite ready for the type of reckless abandonment that he and I used to seek out on our journeys. You know, the road less traveled, off the beaten path, and all that sort of stuff.

So, where to go, where to go?

A screen shot of my TripAdvisor™ profile map was a little surprising! I'VE ONLY SEEN 21% OF THE WORLD! My, my I have a lot more to do. Out comes the pencil and journal and random places and ideas start pouring out . . . again, overwhelmed by the idea of it, I decided to do something so unlike any thing I had ever done . . . but that's a story for another blog post on another day!

Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything.. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you.. So you can be who you are meant to be in the first place.